learning creativity reflection
tabarak younis
Week6-Intro_Press_full.pptxIntroduction to creativity Studies
PRESS
Systems view of Creativity
Hennessey & Amabile, 2010,
Annual Review of Psychology
Creative PresS
“Everyone has some notions and a few terms that describe the environment that helps them concentrate, rise to the challenge, be productive, be playful, and generally feel good. This is the press – the space or the place where creativity lives.”
Fox & Fox, p. 182
Southeast Oakville
The Two Basic Components of the Creative Press a) Physical Press & b) Social-Psychological Press
Physical Press
Temperature
Noise
Colours
Smells
Lighting
What is your ideal creative space and/or place where you feel most creative and productive
Abstract
Employee creativity is critical to organizational competitiveness. However, the potential contribution made by the workspace and the physical environment is not fully taken into account because, up to now, it has been rather unclear how aspects of the physical environment, especially light, can support creativity. Consequently, in six studies, the present research investigated the effect of light and darkness on creative performance. We expected that darkness would offer individuals freedom from constraints, enabling a global and explorative processing style, which in turn facilitates creativity. First, four studies demonstrated that both priming darkness and actual dim illumination improved creative performance. The priming studies revealed that the effect can occur outside of people's awareness and independent of differences in visibility. Second, two additional studies tested the underlying mechanism and showed that darkness elicits a feeling of being free from constraints and triggers a risky, explorative processing style. As expected, perceived freedom from constraints mediated the effect of dim illumination on creativity. Third, moderation analyses demonstrated the effects' boundary conditions: the darkness-related increase in creativity disappeared when using a more informal indirect light instead of direct light or when evaluating ideas instead of generating creative ideas. In sum, these results contribute to the understanding of visual atmospheres (i.e. visual messages), their importance for lighting effects, and their impact via conceptual links and attentional tuning. Limitations as well as practical implications for lighting design are discussed.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/tidy-desk-or-messy-desk-each-has-its-benefits.html
Press matters…
“We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.”
Lawrence Durrell,
Poet & Novelist (1912-1990)
Water, Photograph by Madeline Costa, BAA Photography, Sheridan
four days of immersion in nature…increases performance on a creativity, problem-solving task by a full 50% in a group of naive hikers.
Our results demonstrate that there is a cognitive advantage to be realized if we spend time immersed in a natural setting.
WHY??
-executive functions and cognitive control are crucial for higher order cognitive functions including selective attention, problem solving, inhibition, and multi-tasking
-media devices tax these systems
-Attention Restoration Theory (ART) suggests that exposure to nature can restore prefrontal cortex-mediated executive processes such as those listed above, because it is more emotionally positive and less cognitively demanding
Potential causes for improvement:
-nature is less cognitively demanding and more emotionally positive
-lack of technology
http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/creativity-and-distraction
Physical Press: Inside Google Toronto Office
Image retrieved from google.ca
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Physical Press Inside Pixar Studios
Image retrieved from officesnapshots.com
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Physical Press Inside INITECH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLUidiYm0w
Image retrieved from officesnapshots.com
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What do you think?
Traditional or “cool” workplace?
The Two Basic Components of the Creative Press a) Physical Press & b) Social-Psychological Press
Social-Psychological Press
Climate
Culture
Motivation
Incentives
organizations, cultures, and institutions
Teresa Amabile
American Professor of Business Administration
Componential Theory of Creativity
*Creative Press*
Componential Theory of Creativity
Builds upon the sociocultural model
Identifies the social, psychological, and environmental factors necessary for an individual to produce a creative work.
Highly influential in the areas of business, organizational creativity, and society-wide innovation.
Teresa Amabile
Domain-relevant SKills
The abilities and talents that are related to the field in which an individual wishes to create/innovate.
E.g.
Software Dev = programming
Animator = artistic ability
Musician = playing instrument
Domain-relevant skills
Social Environment
Creativity-Relevant Processes
Task Motivation
Creativity-relevant Processes
The personality traits and cognitive style conducive to creativity.
Independence, risk-taking, taking new perspectives, self-discipline, skill in generating ideas, synthesizing information, breaking from the status quo, and tolerance for ambiguity.
Domain-relevant skills
Social Environment
Creativity-Relevant Processes
Task Motivation
Task Motivation
Intrinsic task motivation is passion: the motivation to undertake a task or solve a problem because it is interesting, involving, personally challenging, and/or satisfying.
People are motivated by intrinsic not extrinsic factors (i.e. paying people more does not boost creativity).
Domain-relevant skills
Social Environment
Creativity-Relevant Processes
Task Motivation
Social Environment
The work or social environment.
Includes all the extrinsic motivators that have been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation.
Domain-relevant skills
Social Environment
Creativity-Relevant Processes
Task Motivation
Producing a Creative Environment
Creativity Killers
Harshly criticizing new ideas
Political problems
Emphasis on status quo
Conservative, low-risk attitude
Excessive time pressure
Creativity Enablers
Positive challenge
Work teams that are collaborative, diversely skilled, and idea-focused
Freedom in carrying out work
Leaders that encourage creativity and innovation
Mechanisms to act upon new ideas
Sharing ideas across the organization
Social-Psychological Press: Goran Ekvall’s Ten Dimensions (See Fox & Fox, pp. 188-193)
Challenge
Freedom (think: autonomy)
Dynamism and Liveliness
Trust and Openness (think: safety)
Idea Time (think: Inside Pixar)
Playfulness and Humour
Idea Support
Debates
Risk Taking
Conflicts
Amabile on innovation
two forces that enable progress:
(1) catalysts-events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy
(2) nourishers-interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality
Social-Psychological Press: Culture and Climate See Fox & Fox, p. 202
Goran Ekvall (1990) The Organizational Culture of Idea-Management: A Creative Climate for the Management of Ideas
Culture
The deep-rooted assumptions, beliefs, values that are “taken for granted” within an organization
Climate
The attitudes and feelings that result from organizational culture
It is the observable behaviours, attitudes, and feelings of the individuals/employees that, over time, reflect the organizational culture (p. 199)
The Two Basic Components of the Creative Press a) Physical Press & b) Social-Psychological Press
Social-Psychological Press
Climate
Culture
Motivation
Incentives
example
How is science conducted?
Publication process
Scientists conduct a study
Scientists write paper
Submit paper to a journal
Peers review whether it is a valid/interesting contribution to literature
Editor decides if it is accepted
Publication process
Limited space in journals, especially high impact ones (e.g., 92% of submissions to Nature are rejected)
Requisite for career advancement
Current state of science
Extremely competitive to get jobs and funding
NSERC: National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada
CIHR: Canadian Institute for Health Research
NSF: National Science Foundation (US)
NIH: National Institutes of Health (US)
Massive pressure to produce
Publish or perish!
Incentives
To conduct studies that yield positive results
To conduct studies that have catchy results, sufficiently interesting to attract interest at high impact journals
To not undertake risky long-term projects that may not come out as expected
Consequences
Consequences
Outright fraud
E.g. Flawed science: The fraudulent research practices of social psychologist Diederik Stape
verification bias: an experiment is repeated until it produces the desired outcomes
unwelcome experimental subjects or results are thrown out
research procedures described in a paper were different from those actually used
statisticians on the panels found "countless flaws"
Consequences
Excess Success for Psychology Articles in the Journal Science (Francis et al., 2014)
This article describes a systematic analysis of the relationship between empirical
data and theoretical conclusions for a set of experimental psychology articles
published in the journal Science between 2005–2012. When the success rate of a
set of empirical studies is much higher than would be expected relative to the
experiments’ reported effects and sample sizes, it suggests that null findings have
been suppressed, that the experiments or analyses were inappropriate, or that the
theory does not properly follow from the data. The analyses herein indicate such
excess success for 83% (15 out of 18) of the articles in Science that report four or
more studies and contain sufficient information for the analysis. This result
suggests a systematic pattern of excess success among psychology articles in the
journal Science.
Primary Obstacles and Solutions
The over-arching framework in which research is conducted has enduring problems
Difficult to change
Advocate for more science politically
Outlets for replications and null findings
Methodology and statistical issues can lead to false/over-stated conclusions
Solving the above issues
Replication worth saying again
Exploration of new/refinement of existing techniques
Physical Press Inside PERIMETER INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBnTr8rUWmY
Image retrieved from officesnapshots.com
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What is the social psychological press for you as a student?
Motivation
Incentives
What is the social psychological press for the field you want to enter?
Motivation
Incentives
Inspiration can be found anywhere
“Inspiration is everywhere so don't get trapped in reading and watching too much. Get out. Talk to people, friends, family, loved ones. Draw inspiration from everyday life. It has inexhaustible references and is always original.”
Arnold Arre
